Salads

Salads are a super easy thing to whip up for a picnic, and are honestly super easy to eat. It’s not drippy, its light and can be eaten cold. We were quite ambitious while planning and decided to do 5 salads, but in the end we only made 3 salads. I made two a Garbanzo Summer Salad and a Green Quinoa Summer Salad (you’re probably sensing the theme I was going for). My friend made her version of a Pasta Salad and so we called it the Nitya Pasta Salad.

Lets start with hers, for the Pasta Salad:

Handful of mint

Bunch of coriander

Squeeze of honey

Lemon juice

Olive oil

Sea salt

A green chilly

Whole wheat pasta

Capsicum – we used green and red

Cucumber

Onion

Cherry tomatoes

Carrot

In a hand blender, add the mint, coriander, honey, salt, olive oil, lemon juice, green chilly and blitz to a fine paste. You can make a big batch of this dressing and freeze it in an ice-cube tray – this makes very convenient if you want to take this salad as a packed lunch.

For the salad, slice the onions, carrots, capsicum, cucumber and tomatoes and add to a large salad bowl. Boil the pasta in the mean time and add to the vegetables once cool.

When ready to serve, generously drizzle the afore-mentioned dressing on the vegetable and pasta mixture.

Now for mine, the garbanzo summer salad:

Garbanzo Beans, soaked overnight

Red bell pepper

Green bell pepper

Cucumber

Carrots

Purple onion

Mayonnaise

Red wine vinegar

Lemon juice

Garlic, minced

Fresh dill

Just like any other salad, it’s all about prepping the vegetables and dressing and then putting it all together.

Using a pressure cooker (if you can access one) cook the soaked garbanzo beans for about 15 minutes, till its cooked.

Now can I ask you to use your creativity to produce equally delicious and stunning looking salads with less exotic ingredients? Things that you would find in a more “average” Indian kitchen? Avocado, mayonnaise, coloured peppers etc are not always (a) affordable and (b) available across India easily!

You’d be surprised Nayantara. What we take for granted is not available in many of the smaller cities and towns. Or one has to really hunt in speciality stores. That includes things like coloured peppers, some herbs, … I agree about mayonnaise though.

I may have to butt in and say that this blog also has a target audience. Most people reading this blog will have access to the Internet, and in that case there are several online delivery options. Honey attey, there are always ingredients one does not get, in that case one could simply Google substitutes.